Sprint expects a tablet PC market shakeout

Bloomberg

Sprint Nextel Corp said the craze for tablet computers in the US, led by Apple Inc’s iPad, would temper as competition forces more than half of manufacturers to abandon the market in the next two years.

“You’ll probably have a good dozen players by the end of this year, and then in two years you’ll probably see just five that are really playing in the space,” Fared Adib, vice president of product development for Sprint, said in an interview in Barcelona yesterday.

Sprint, the third-largest US wireless service provider, will introduce the Research In Motion Ltd PlayBook tablet this year and is already selling the Samsung Electronics Co Galaxy Tab. The carrier has said it will begin selling a third tablet this year that will work on its fourth-generation network, offering faster Web browsing and video downloads.

A number of tablets are “essentially a phone operating system on a tablet,” rather than devices with software and features to take full advantage of the tablet format, Adib said.

He said that the Overland Park, Kansas-based carrier was considering other tablets that use Google Inc’s Android software, in addition to the Galaxy Tab.

Hewlett-Packard Co unveiled a tablet called the TouchPad this month that uses software acquired in last year’s purchase of Palm Inc. Dell Inc, which already sells Android tablets, said last week it also planned to unveil a tablet using Microsoft Corp’s Windows 7 operating system this year.

Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc introduced a tablet computer called Xoom last month that runs on Android. RIM’s PlayBook will use its own operating system.

“There’s going to be a period of intense competition and innovation” in tablets, Qualcomm Inc executive vice president Steve Mollenkopf said in Barcelona. “There will be some winners and losers on the operating system side.”